This past week brought stories about two young actors and their struggles with alcohol. Last week, it was reported that Jonathan Rhys Meyers, 32, was re-hospitalized for alcohol addiction. Days later, 22-year-old Daniel Radcliffe announced that he had battled with alcoholism and no longer drinks.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, the Irish actor who has played Henry VIII on
the Showtime historical drama,The Tudors, has been no
stranger to rehab, having first sought help at a clinic in 2005. He has
had several episodes of getting drunk and acting out towards airport
employees at both Dublin and Paris airports, and last year Meyers was
reportedly banned from a U.S. flight after launching into a drunken
tirade at airport staff in New York.

According to a source close to the actor: “He just really wants to get better … This has been an ongoing battle for him.”

Daniel Radcliffe, best known to the world as the magical Harry Potter, told GQ magazine's British edition that he had an alcohol problem while filming the Harry Potter series in 2009. According to the article, to be released July 7th:

"I became so reliant on (alcohol) to enjoy stuff ...There were a few years there when I was just so enamored with the idea of living some sort of famous person's lifestyle that really isn't suited to me."

Currently Radcliffe is starring on Broadway in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." He reports that he stopped drinking in August 2010, and is perfectly fine with his decision:

"As much as I would love to be a person that goes to parties and has a couple of drinks and has a nice time, that doesn't work for me. I do that very unsuccessfully. I'm actually enjoying the fact I can have a relationship with my girlfriend where I'm really pleasant and I'm not (expletive) up totally all the time."

The last installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 opens July 15th.

Last year, researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
(NIAAA) released findings showing that genetic differences in brain
receptors which deal with “reward centers” play an important role in
determining whether the neurotransmitter dopamine is released in
the brain following alcohol intake. Dopamine creates natural highs -- its
primary function being to stimulate people to do the things that are
good for their survival. It causes the euphoria that accompanies sex,
good food and exercise.

Research shows that in the early phases of alcoholism, people drink
because it is pleasurable — the body tells the mind that drinking is
rewarding. The idea that the amount of dopamine released in response to
alcohol may have a genetic component helps researchers understand why
alcohol affects people in very different ways.

In an article which appeared online in Molecular Psychiatry on May 18, 2010, researchers reported that senior author and NIAAA clinical director Dr. Markus Heilig:

“…studied mice, rats and rhesus macaques and, going on a hunch that
genetics are at work in this equation, he turned up some curious
results. He found that in people who possess a specific genetic variant,
this chemical pleasure reward is much more pronounced because when
alcohol is consumed, their bodies release a swell of dopamine that
heightens the physical connection to drinking. This intense reward only
prompts the body to want more alcohol, continuing the cycle and
strengthening the chemical connection. In people without the variant,
their bodies’ dopamine release was nonexistent.”

First author on the paper, Dr.Vijay Ramchandani, commented: “The
findings add further support to the notion that individuals who possess
this receptor variant may experience enhanced pleasurable effects from
alcohol that could increase their risk for developing alcohol abuse and
dependence. It may also explain why these individuals, once addicted,
benefit more from treatment with blockers of endogenous opioids.”

How does your experience with treating patients with alcoholism relate to these findings?

Accessibility Statement

At MedPage Today, we are committed to ensuring that individuals with disabilities can access all of the content offered by MedPage Today through our website and other properties. If you are having trouble accessing www.medpagetoday.com, MedPageToday's mobile apps, please email legal@ziffdavis.com for assistance. Please put "ADA Inquiry" in the subject line of your email.